


Latin

by eponine119



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27554014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponine119/pseuds/eponine119
Summary: “You should teach me Latin,” Sawyer suggests. Juliet wants something in return.
Relationships: Juliet Burke/James "Sawyer" Ford
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Latin

Latin  
by eponine119  
September 4, 2020

“You should teach me Latin.” Sawyer stretches in his chair, sets down his beer, and looks at her with eyes that are dark and just a little bit sexy. 

“Why?” Juliet asks, and she's laughing. 

“Why not?” he asks in return. Juliet just keeps smiling. “Don't you want me to be enlightened?” Something changes in his expression. “Don't you think I can do it?” 

“Of course you can do it,” Juliet says, giving him a curious look. It's not like him to be insecure, but that's not quite what this is. It's not like him to accuse her in order to support his insecurities, whatever they are. She wonders, not for the first time and not for the last, what is going on in his head. “What brought this on?” 

He shrugs. 

She nods, as though he's answered her. “And?” 

“It can be our secret language, I don't know. Why does anyone learn anything? My job sucks and I'm bored. I want you to teach me somethin'.” 

“Can I teach you how to fold the laundry when you take it out of the dryer instead of throwing it back in the basket?” 

“Juliet,” he growls, reaching for her. 

“James,” she says back, ending up sitting crossways in his lap. She wiggles, and he sighs, and then he kisses her. 

“Please,” he says, when his lips part from hers and she's looking at him with soft eyes. 

“Since you said please,” she says, with that hint of teasing spunkiness that he loves. “But you have to teach me something in return.” 

“What the hell do I know that you wanna learn?” 

She thinks about it for a moment. “Teach me to play guitar.” 

He scoffs. 

“See?” she says, but he kisses her to seal the deal. 

…

They order books. Sawyer buys a guitar off a guy who works in the cafeteria. He noodles around on it while Juliet flips through textbooks. Then they decide to get started. 

Latin's first. They sit at the dining room table, side by side. Juliet opens the first book. 

“Hey, teach,” he says. 

“You have a question already?” One eyebrow rises. 

“Is this how you learned?” 

“Maybe they made me sit in a classroom with a bunch of little kids,” Juliet suggests. 

Sawyer shakes his head. “I don't buy it.” 

“Why not?” she asks. 

“There weren't any kids. Not til we landed here.” 

And the Others stole the kids who'd been on the plane, because they deserved better than living in fear in the jungle and the beach. That's what goes unspoken. But Juliet's thinking even farther back. There weren't any kids because the mothers always died, slipping away underneath her fingertips. 

“There was Alex,” Juliet says quietly. Thinking of the girl, who didn't survive Ben's manipulations and mind games. Who had also deserved better. 

“Hey,” Sawyer says again, gently. 

She shakes her head, and blinks the tears out of her eyes. “We'd better get started.” 

“Juliet,” Sawyer says, like honey, and she glances at him in spite of herself. 

She takes a deep breath and lets it out shakily. She doesn't want to talk about this, about how Alex at thirteen was probably the closest thing to a daughter she'll ever have. She doesn't want to talk to him about kids, having them or not. 

“Salve,” she says, and he looks at him. “That means hello. It's a good place to start.” 

He looks at her with kindness, and then repeats the word back to her. Then he shows her his dimples. “How d'ya say I love you?” 

“Later,” she promises. 

…

Then it's her turn. She sits on the dining room chair, pulled away from the table, and he hands her the guitar. She takes it, and lays it across her lap, strings facing up. 

“C'mon,” he says. She looks at him. “I gotta teach you how to hold it?” 

“Apparently.” 

He takes a soft breath and approaches her. He turns the guitar on its side, and settles it against her thigh. She lets him pick up her right arm and place it on the body of the guitar. Then he tries to curl her left hand around the neck. But he shakes his head. 

“What?” she asks. “I'm doing it wrong already?” 

“Harder than it looks,” he says, and moves around her, settling in at her back, facing the same direction she is. He leans over her, arms draped around her as he molds her fingers and hands with his own. 

“Don't I need a pick?” she asks. 

“You can use your fingers.” His voice is soft in her ear. 

She turns her head. “This is sexier than Latin.” 

“Why you picked it, ain't it?” 

Her lips curl into a smile as he positions her fingers and then moves her hand. A noise emerges from the strings. Juliet laughs. “I'm doing it!” she cries, and leans back against him. 

“It's gonna take some practice.” 

“You're saying it wasn't good?” she asks, and he just laughs. 

…

They practice every day. Latin, guitar; guitar, latin. 

Juliet isn't bad. She took piano lessons for a couple of years as a child, so the concepts aren't entirely unfamiliar. She can kind of read music. It's just for fun, anyway, and for those moments when he has to make it physical and they end up sprawled together on the floor. 

Sawyer's a serious student. Juliet can see the intelligence in him, the gears in his mind working as he absorbs words, phrases, declensions. They rarely end up sprawled on the floor, though. There's just not enough touching in Latin. 

…

“Play for me,” she says, handing him the guitar one night. Her fingertips sting and she wonders why she ever started this. 

He takes it from her, but looks like he's going to set it down. His eyebrows rise when he looks at her. He doesn't play for fun. She's never heard him play anything except when he was demonstrating as part of a lesson. 

“Play something for me, James,” she says again, making her voice soft and meeting his eyes. 

He gives her a nod and situates the guitar, giving it a tentative strum. She watches his fingers and thinks how much better it sounds than when she does the same thing. He gives her a look, then goes to work on a melody. 

He closes his eyes when he sings. Juliet watches him and wonders why. Is it because she's watching him? Is he shy or embarrassed, or does it just make it easier somehow? She can't make herself look away. 

He has a good voice. She's not sure why she's surprised, that it's been hiding inside him. She wonders what other secrets are in there. She can feel it soaking into her. Sawyer finishes the song, and when he opens his eyes, it's like the ending of a kiss, with him looking to her for reaction and reassurance. 

She applauds, and he closes his mouth on a smile. “Why don't you play?” she asks. 

He shrugs, just one shoulder going up and down, then looks at her again. 

“Who taught you?” 

“Just messin' around after school,” he says dismissively. “Long time ago now.” 

“You're good.” 

“Fair to middlin', like a lot of things,” he says, and his hair is hanging down into his eyes. “Never been good at much of anything.” 

“James,” she protests. 

He shakes his head, and it's a warning for her to drop it. She doesn't want to. She wants to know him, what goes on inside his head. But she doesn't want to fight, when she feels so tenderly toward him after listening to him play and watching him, vulnerable, with his eyes closed. 

…

“Speak to me,” he says, in the middle of one of their lessons. In Latin, he means. 

“We already did dictation.” 

“Then maybe you should read to me,” he suggests, tossing her the Latin edition of Alice in Wonderland that's one of their textbooks. She wonders why it's always that book, no matter what language you're studying. She supposes it's because Harry Potter hasn't been written yet. 

She catches the book and it falls open at page 3, which as far as they've gotten. It isn't even an easy book to understand in English. “What's this about?” she asks, closing the book and setting it aside. 

“I just wanna hear it. Hear you. Talk to me.” 

“What do you want me to say?” she asks. “I'm so rusty. I think I've forgotten half of what I ever learned.” 

“Then talk dirty to me,” he says, with a new light in his eyes. 

“Oh,” she says, now that she sees where this is going. 

“C'mon, you gotta know all the dirty words. You wouldn't forget those.” 

She has to give him that one, because he's right. “All the best dirty words came from Latin.” She runs a hand through her hair, and is suddenly aware of his eyes on her, following her movements like he's tiger, tightly sprung and about to pounce. Heat settles in her chest. 

“Like what?” he asks. 

“Maybe I should whisper them,” she offers. 

“Maybe you should say 'em out loud. Shout from the town square.” 

“You can. After I teach you.” She leans over close to him, aware of the heat of his body and how shallowly he's breathing. Her lips stop just short of the curl of his ear, tempting as it is to let her tongue trace his earlobe and then take it between her teeth. One of his hands rests in a tight fist against his thigh. She whispers. 

He lets out a huff of breath. “Already knew that one.” 

She whispers another word. 

“Juliet,” he says, looking at her, and she wishes he would touch her. 

She offers him another word. He's staring at her lips. 

“You want me to?” he breathes. 

For a second, all she can do is nod. “Yeah,” she agrees, and they move toward each other so fast her empty chair tips and falls. Neither of them cares. Maybe there can be enough touching in Latin, after all. 

...

“Why did you really want to learn?” Juliet asks. She's interrupting; she'd given him five minutes to do a translation, mostly because she needed to thumb through the next chapter and remind herself of the vocabulary and how it all worked. 

“We needed somethin' to do. To talk about,” he says. 

“You thought we needed a hobby?” She's surprised. 

“Can't read books all the time.” 

“I could, James,” she says, deadpan. 

“Don't I know it,” he teases. “You sayin' I'm wrong? You ain't enjoying yourself?” 

“You're not wrong,” she says. 

“Maybe I wanna be able to talk to Richard,” Sawyer says. “Man to man.” 

“Oh, too bad,” Juliet says, and he looks at her. “Richard speaks Spanish. Now, that would impress him.” 

“It ain't Richard that made you all learn Latin?” 

Juliet shakes her head. 

“I figured it was his native language.” 

“You think he's from ancient Rome?” She manages not to giggle.

“He could be,” Sawyer says, voice rising with a hint of amused irritation. “When the hell is he from, then?” 

Juliet shrugs. “Eighteen hundreds sometime. He doesn't like to talk about it.” 

“You'n him friends?” 

“You jealous?” she shoots back, but only leaves him hanging for a moment, in which she sees something interesting and painful in his eyes. “No, we're not friends. I barely know him. He gives me a headache.” That's the truth, actually. There's no scientific explanation for Richard. Whenever she runs into him, her eye starts to twitch. 

“Why Latin, then?” Sawyer asks. 

“Why do the Others do anything?” she replies. It's easier than trying to explain about Jacob. She doesn't really know or understand about Jacob. She was never one of the in-crowd. Ben made sure of that. 

“You speak any other languages I should know about?” Sawyer asks her. 

“Only high school French.” She looks at him curiously. 

“Moi aussi,” he replies. 

“Oh, good,” she says, resting her head against his shoulder. “Talk to me in French.” 

“J'adore,” he says with feeling. 

“You got that off a TV commercial.” 

“Peut être.” He shrugs in a French sort of way. 

“Well, j'adore you right back,” she says, looking into his eyes. He closes his notebook on his pen and shoves all the books onto the floor, clearing the table. Then he looks at her. “Not on the kitchen table, James,” she says. 

“Floor's starting to hurt my back.” 

“We have a perfectly good bed,” she points out. 

“Maybe we should start havin' lessons in there.” 

“It'd save time,” she agrees, taking his hand to lead him down the hall. 

“I better get an A on this test,” he says. 

“Tace et da mihi osculum,” she says, and he looks at her questioningly. “It means, shut up and kiss me.” 

“Why in hell you know how to say that?” he demands. 

“I looked it up,” she admits, leaning in to him. “Aren't you glad I did?” 

He makes a sexy noise, and then does as she'd commanded. 

(end)

**Author's Note:**

> All the Latin came from Google Translate, because I am not an Other. So, apologies if it is wrong. 
> 
> Since I'm down here leaving a note, I might as well mention that feedback is always guaranteed to make my day, if you'd like to leave kudos or comment. :)


End file.
